Valve has launched its proposed Steam Greenlight program to enlist community support for determining games to be released through the Steam service. Here's the deal:

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the launch of Steam Greenlight, a new platform feature that enlists the community's help in selecting some of the next games to be released on Steam.

Announced earlier this summer, Steam Greenlight allows developers and publishers to post information and media about their game in an effort to convince the Community that the game should be released on Steam. Greenlight piggybacks on Steam Workshop's flexible system that organizes content and lets customers rate and leave feedback.

"We've been working on this feature for the last few months with the input from a group of indie partners, and the response has been extremely positive," said Valve's Anna Sweet. "With the additional help of beta testers, we are able to launch with a solid line-up of titles for the community to start viewing and rating. And, as we've done with all Steam features, we intend to continually grow and modify Greenlight as more and more developers and community members have a chance to get involved."

As well as serving as a clearing house for game submissions, Greenlight provides an incredible level of added exposure for new games and an opportunity to connect directly with potential customers and fans.

Frijoles wrote on Aug 31, 2012, 10:30:I figure it'll straighten itself up after a week or two when the trolls get bored and move on.

Oh and that happened in CS when? Its been going on 10 years and they are still there in the original game, trolls, hackers, griefers, etc.

There's a never ending supply of them, and since steam is ever increasing in popularity, as some of them move on, many more new ones will take their place.

CS is a game that people play together, Greenlight is not. Everything on the internet attracts trolls but hes just saying it will die down from the initial explosion, don't get your panties in a knot Olga

And greenlight is a games platform with a strong social component, and a constant influx of people, including brand new people, some of which are new trolls who will think its a great joke on their friends to make a new "game".

Frijoles wrote on Aug 31, 2012, 10:30:I figure it'll straighten itself up after a week or two when the trolls get bored and move on.

Oh and that happened in CS when? Its been going on 10 years and they are still there in the original game, trolls, hackers, griefers, etc.

There's a never ending supply of them, and since steam is ever increasing in popularity, as some of them move on, many more new ones will take their place.

CS is a game that people play together, Greenlight is not. Everything on the internet attracts trolls but hes just saying it will die down from the initial explosion, don't get your panties in a knot Olga

John wrote on Aug 31, 2012, 11:20:Yeah I know.. plus it seems the games need a LOT of votes to even be considered anyways. The most I've seen only has 8-9% of the necessary votes to be considered so far.

Dev wrote on Aug 30, 2012, 21:51:They do not check or verify anything AT ALL.

You're right! Someone posted a flight sim where you fly into the World Trade Center! That is some BS there. They should at least glance over the games to make sure nothing like that gets submitted. At least most people are giving it negative comments and thumbs down..

It doesn't matter, the games don't automatically go onto the store just because people vote them. Valve still vets the submissions themselves.

Dev wrote on Aug 30, 2012, 21:51:They do not check or verify anything AT ALL.

You're right! Someone posted a flight sim where you fly into the World Trade Center! That is some BS there. They should at least glance over the games to make sure nothing like that gets submitted. At least most people are giving it negative comments and thumbs down..

Verno wrote on Aug 30, 2012, 14:27:They need to rethink parts of this, some fans are going to nominate games that are potentially stolen. I hope they have some oversight on this.

I would think they (Steam) checks for stuff like that before they allow it to be voted on.

They do not check or verify anything AT ALL. That isn't interesting or fun to valve. Remember their stated goal in doing this is to REDUCE the workload and only look at the top community games, so community does the boring work for them. They don't want to spend 24/7 policing this. Unfortunately for them, the way they set it up, any random griefer, troll, or fanboy can submit any game under the sun, or a made up game. Fanboys are submitting games they have no right to (devs are supposed to submit) that they want to see on steam. Trolls and griefers are submitting games that are already on steam, or made up games, or doing pron for pics of the game.

Valve is banning, but its only a community tab ban and only for 1 week. Not nearly enough.

IMHO, it should be a minimum of a week long total steam account ban for first offense. Otherwise this is going to turn into a infested mess and nothing much useful come out of greenlight. It should also be required that you have purchased a steam game to submit anything, so you can't just create a steam account for free and spam more.

Make sure if you like a project, to try and verify that its been put there by the real devs and not fanboys who like it, or trolls who might be trying to steal money out of a project.

Another valve release project that didn't have nearly enough forethought or testing put into it.

On the other hand, if they can get past the growing pains, hand out heavier bans, make submitting a project have a few more requirements, it could be something really great. I'd love to get some good community voted projects into steam that valve seems to ignore. My 500+ steam games aren't enough yet

Also, when I hit the back button after viewing a project, I'm taking back to the page I was on, but some of the projects have changed.

Pretty sure I've seen the same project on multiple pages a few times...

I like it, but trying to shoehorn it into the existing steam workshop format isn't doing it any favors...

It appears that the order is constantly being updated or something. Don't know if it's from people "uprating" it or new games being added to the list though. It would be nice to sort by popularity too.